A Prince of Martial Splendour in the Sixteen Kingdoms: Li Hao (351-417), Ruler of Western Liang - (Sinica Leidensia) by Dominik Declercq (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Fifth Century CE, Western Liang, at the edge of the Silk Roads, where the interaction between local Chinese elites and non-Chinese ruling houses, seen close up in the life and times of Li Hao, had a lasting formative influence on Chinese culture and society for centuries to come.

Book Synopsis

The Sixteen Kingdoms (304-439) saw Northern China become a multiethnic mosaic of states and statelets, one of which was Western Liang (400-422) in modern Gansu province at the edge of the Silk Roads. Its founder Li Hao was a Han settler on soil only recently annexed to the Empire. Here, immigrants ruled semi-nomadic locals, while elsewhere, non-Chinese ruling houses dealt with local Chinese elites. Their interaction, here seen close up in the life and times of Li Hao, had a lasting formative influence on Chinese culture and society for centuries to come.

Review Quotes

"A Prince of Martial Splendour is a rich and remarkable work that will surely inspire future research on this little understood and critically understudied period in Chinese history. In sum, Dominik Declercq has done us a great service with his new book, and I will return to it again and again."- Stephanie Balkwill, Journal of Chinese History (2025) doi:10.1017/jch.2025.10060.

About the Author

Dominik Declercq (Ph.D. Leiden, 1993) is an independent scholar who has lived and worked in China for nearly 40 years. He is the author of Writing against the State: Political Rhetorics in Third and Fourth Century China (Brill, 1998).